Ontologies for Representing Relations among Political Agents

Abstract: The Internet and the Web are now an integral part of the way most modern societies, and corresponding political systems, work. We regard Political systems as the formal and informal political processes by which decisions are made concerning the use, production and distribution of resources in any given society. Our focus in on the sets of agents - Persons and Organizations - that govern a society, and their relations. We present a set of ontologies aimed at characterizing different kinds of direct and indirect relations that occur within a Political System. The goal is to provide a more semantically precise basis for determining more abstract notions such as "influence". These ontologies are being used for the "Se Liga na Politica" project, whose goal is to provide an open linked data database of Political Agents in Brazil. Whereas they are being used in a particular political system, these ontologies can be applied to different political systems.